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Unless strong action is taken, sadly, the internet will continue to get worse and worse. For the following reasons:

1) more site's, more competition, this is a very underestimated downword spiral in itself. I recommend some trial or filter so that not everyone can put their crap online.

2) paid ranking (goto.com, google, etc.) Emerging big companies will easily destroy the ranking of small sites, which is kinda discouraging to small business. I say hard work and knowledge should continue to rank us.

3) advertising. pop-ups, software/spyware, spam, etc., in case anyone has noticed it is getting worse. so when will it stop? (see subject)

4) everyone is trying to "cash-in", a million sellers and a thousand buyers. makes the internet experience very frustrating.

5) the new domain name selling. In a perfect world people can register the domains their about to *use*. But no, we must now fork over $75,000+ to someone who just has the domain to sell, and has no plan to use it. i say that should be somewhat illegal.

6) spam. it gets worse and worse and how can it really be stopped, another contribution the internet deadend.

7) nothing is free. remember back 3 years ago when you could get on the internet and their were actually good *free* things? software, services, etc. Well now thier isnt. Your either paying or utilizing a "free" service that makes you view their ads over and over again. ex., NetZero. (who by the way isnt free anymore)
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the only things getting better with the internet is technology, whether you take that good or bad.

Last edited by Nicky; Mar 2, 2001 at 22:29.

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If you werent so fat perhaps you'd
be skinny.
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I disagree with a lot that you have said. I'll post my responses beneath what you wrote.

Originally posted by Digitial Revolutionary 1) more site's, more competition, this is a very underestimated downword spiral in itself. I recommend some trial or filter so that not everyone can put their crap online.

More sites mean more information. There isn't a single site on the Internet that has 100% all possible information about a specific topic. Sure, more sites might mean that you have to do more searching, but that isn't such a big deal. As for the crap online, who would be to judge it... you? The Internet isn't Communist Cuba where only the people of the party can be represented.

2) paid ranking (goto.com, google, etc.) Emerging big companies will easily destroy the ranking of small sites, which is kinda discouraging to small business. I say hard work and knowledge should continue to rank us.

First off, Google isn't paid ranking. They might have a sponsored link when you look up something, but all the other sites are submitted by mom and pop sites like you and me. As for GoTo, it isn't true that big companies will 'destory' the ranking of small sites. It all depends on what keywords you bid on. If you want something really generic, like "sports," sure, you're probably going to get beat out by ESPN and The Sporting News, but if you bid on "Spanish Soccer," you'll find you have more success. BTW, when you look at the number of free search engines compared to the number of pay to be listed, it really isn't close-- there are a lot more free ones.

3) advertising. pop-ups, software/spyware, spam, etc., in case anyone has noticed it is getting worse. so when will it stop? (see subject)

Do you ever ask when will commercials on tv stop? Or when they will tear down all the bulletin boards in a major metropolitan city? I'm guessing the answer is "no," so why would the Internet be any different? They still have ads in the newspaper, do you question those?

4) everyone is trying to "cash-in", a million sellers and a thousand buyers. makes the internet experience very frustrating.

Didn't all the people rush for California when they found gold there in 1849? If you don't know, the answer is yes. And as we've seen recently, not everyone can win. That's why all the dot coms are laying people off and going bankrupt.

5) the new domain name selling. In a perfect world people can register the domains their about to *use*. But no, we must now fork over $75,000+ to someone who just has the domain to sell, and has no plan to use it. i say that should be somewhat illegal.

So if I own a peice of land and someone wants to come and develop on it, I should just give it to them for free? Why's that? It's my land, I paid for it. Or can't I own land that I'm not putting houses on? What if I don't have the money to build on it yet but am working towards it? I should have to give it someone who has an idea. Yeah right.

6) spam. it gets worse and worse and how can it really be stopped, another contribution the internet deadend.

That's the one thing we agree on. I hate getting spam in my mailboxes. Funniest thing happened the other day, I got an email in my MSN account (which I only have to use MSN Explorer-- I don't even know what the address is). I've never given it out to anyway, mainly because I don't use it, and I got some spam. Bothers me.

7) nothing is free. remember back 3 years ago when you could get on the internet and their were actually good *free* things? software, services, etc. Well now thier isnt. Your either paying or utilizing a "free" service that makes you view their ads over and over again. ex., NetZero. (who by the way isnt free anymore)

The only thing free around anywhere is the air we breathe. Nothing is free in the world, get used to that. With advertising prices going down, and companies losing money big time, they have to drop out of the business.

Overall, my recommendation to you is to re-think some of your arguments. I have a feeling I know what viewpoint you are coming from, but you have to think about the big picture. Sooner rather than later, the Internet is going to become just another feature in the society that we live in. More and more people and becoming connected everyday. But now that everyone realizes you can't just make it big in a week, there will be more organization and planning put into the development of sites on the web. And that is what you want, right? Not just the "crap" that people put on.

Maybe we should the NIO (New Internet Order) but it would never work. The internet is huge the whole world is connected to it and there is no way we could control. And I belive more competition is good it weeds out all the people that won't go the extra mile to get costomers.

1) Paid ranking doesn't mean quality. All it shows is who has the deepest
pockets or who is most willing to go into great debt for the #1 spot. And major corps
can easily out pay smaller businesses all the time, but smaller business
often have better products and services.

2) Agree about the land. Unless you can prove a copyright or trademark
issue IMO there's little difference between selling a good domain name
and selling a piece of prime real estate.

3) Competition will eventuallyh weed out many of the sellers. Some will
fail, some will get bored and leave, some will be bought by others etc.
Nothing lasts forever. I've seen sites that are King of the Hill today and
in the trash tomorrow. Time levels all fields.

I see the opposite as being likely - all these sites that are essentially poor copies of a pre-existing idea (most of them, at least) will die out - Internet companies are dropping left and right, and they'll continue to do so for awhile.

Yes, we have an information overload that will only get worse over time, but to remedy this I'm sure things like special programs or browser features will help to weed them out - search engine technology is improving at a very rapid rate.

[1) more site's, more competition, this is a very underestimated downword spiral in itself. I recommend some trial or filter so that not everyone can put their crap online.

As HyperBaseball said, more sites mean more wealth of information. And more competition only makes the competitors better themselves, thus making everything better.

2) paid ranking (goto.com, google, etc.) Emerging big companies will easily destroy the ranking of small sites, which is kinda discouraging to small business. I say hard work and knowledge should continue to rank us.

Pay-per-listing will continue to grow, but free listings will never die.

3) advertising. pop-ups, software/spyware, spam, etc., in case anyone has noticed it is getting worse. so when will it stop? (see subject)

The Internet isn't free, and like television, you'll have to live with ads. Right now, the advertising market is doing through a change to try to stop it's downward spiral, so things are changing, hopefully for the better.

4) everyone is trying to "cash-in", a million sellers and a thousand buyers. makes the internet experience very frustrating.

Isn't everyone in this world trying to "cash in"?

7) nothing is free. remember back 3 years ago when you could get on the internet and their were actually good *free* things? software, services, etc. Well now thier isnt. Your either paying or utilizing a "free" service that makes you view their ads over and over again. ex., NetZero. (who by the way isnt free anymore)

Of course the majority of free sharewares will have ads, they have to have some income. Download.com, HotFiles.com, etc. - thousands of free files.

Why not? These search engines have to survive just like everyone else, they certainly can't survive on banner ads alone anymore so would you rather see the service dissappear or deal with a few paid ads in the search results.

I know it is a pretty thin argument but if you think about it nothing is free, including the air we breath. Most people here pay taxes and part of your taxes go to environmental protection agencies that spend your money on cleaning air. Everything costs something now, even the air you are breathing.

As a user/searcher I'm not interested in paid for search engine listings because I find they don't generate results relevant to my research. So as a site owner I don't bother with them either. I can't fault the search engines for doing it, it just isn't a service that is any use to me.

And I'm actually unsettled by sites that don't have advertising now, because they look as unprofessional as all those banner farms did three years ago.

I keep hearing how sales have gone in the toilet and the
internet is on it's way out.

I hope it's on the way out for the fly by night operations
that think if you build a site "they will come" and get
ripped off. Those people are on their way out.

For those with quaility sites that offer products and services
that deliver, it's never looked better.

My site has increased in sales of about 300% over last year.
This is my 5th year on the net and I've never been more
excited.

As far as the PPC engines go, that's called capital lism! I can't
compete with the big corps on major search terms, but I do
have all the bottom search ters (about 1,000 of them @ .05) that
gets me 3,000 hits per month. Where else can you get 3,000
hits for $150?

So true! We've been publishing since 1997, and the last 2 quarters have been the best we've ever had. All this negative hype surrounding the internet is getting seriously boring. I read an excellent article on this subject in Business2.0 magazine, see below:

"Dotcom layoffs accounted for a miniscule 3.2% of total layoffs in December.
Yet the media, in its aggressive coverage of the "dotbomb" story, are
creating buzz where there should be a whisper. DaimlerChrysler, General
Electric and Motorola are laying off thousands of employees; whereas
pets.com, epinions and salon.com have let go less than 300 combined.
Excessive coverage is distorting the significance of the dotcom sector to
the whole economy. We at business 2.0, an admitted offender conducted an
audit of three influential dailies, The New York Times, the Wall Street
Journal and The Washington Post, to determine whether they were giving
disproportionate attention to dotcom layoffs.

The ratio of non dotcom layoffs is 30:1. In an imaginary world where
editors were strict mathematicians, 30 articles on non dotcom layoffs would
appear for every one article of layoffs among the dotcoms. Using a 32 day
timeframe spanning from January 1 to February 1st, we painstakingly counted
the number of articles printed, and as expected, none of the dailies came
close to that ratio. Instead of 30:1 the ratio was roughly 2:1!"

Don't believe the hype! (Unless you own stocks on NASDAQ, in which case its true ;-))